This is kind of an uncharacteristically personal note. I’m going to try to write this straight through and not keep editing it over and over like I normally do. I’m not sure if that will keep it it more authentically representative of my own voice or not. I don’t know what my purpose is writing this. It’s not about current events, and I don’t mean to distract from anything going on right now. Some of it has been in my head for a few days and just needed an outlet, I guess.

I’ve got music playing on random so I don’t have a playlist influencing a specific mood, just personal and current events. Nolan’s off from school today and Lynda and I have been alternating playing with him throughout the day. We’ve had workers outside digging up our yard installing fiber optic lines, been impatiently waiting for that since moving here. I’m happy it’s finally getting done, but the noise has not been great for this near-endless headache. Otherwise though, the day has been pretty good. I’ve had noise-canceling headphones on to counter the noise outside.

A little while back Miles had his annual vet appointment and he had a growth examined, it turned out to be a cancerous sweat gland. The vet was able to remove all of it, but we’ll have to keep an eye on him for the rest of his life, and we had a couple weeks of waiting for lab results to confirm if it was cancerous. After losing Duncan to cancer I know that every time I find a knot or something stuck to his fur I’m going to have a moment of panic.

I’m on a short-term leave again, this time because of the side effects from the medications I started on for the headaches. I’m still getting headaches just about every day, but they’re mostly milder, and they’re at least not constant throughout the day. I’m up to 18 doses of various medications that I take during the day, plus another six that are taken as-needed. Several of those cause eye-dryness, causing double vision and blurriness, and I get dizziness and drowsiness issues from a few. I just got cleared to go back though, so I should be working again in a week or two.

A few months ago I started having a weird bee-sting sort of sensation in my right quadricep whenever I walk fast or stretch my leg. Now it’s happening elsewhere too and that’s been pretty limiting. Being physically limited really makes me beat myself up. I tie up a lot of my self-worth in what I can do physically. I realize it doesn’t matter at all, and no one else cares how much I can lift, but I am furious at myself that I can’t bench x, squat y, deadlift z, etc., even knowing how long it has been since I’ve done any of those.

I think of myself as reasonably smart, but weirdly, I don’t think I tie as much of my own self-valuation to that. That may not have been as true when I was younger. Now though, it makes me more self-conscious and I tear myself down over it. I’m constantly worried that I think I’m better than I am — that maybe I think I’m smarter than I am, more capable than I am, or that I care about causes or people out of feelings of obligation rather than altruism.

At the same time, I look back and feel a sense that I had a responsibility to do better with whatever potential I may have had, but that I have wasted that opportunity. I don’t think I ever knew what I expected to do with my life, but I know at some point in my mind, success to me meant doing something that bettered the world. I guess that’s a pretty tall order, but I felt like that was at least part of my life’s goal. I can sincerely say all the right things about how I’m happy with where I am right now with my family and job, but I can’t say that I don’t feel a sense of having failed at life.

I could ramble on, but if you’ve gotten this far, I’ve already taken up enough of your time. And if I were to go on, I’d probably want to start editing, or maybe finding a purpose to having written this, in which case it would probably turn into something wholly different, which might not be a bad thing, but I don’t know.